fair
part of speech
noun (a fair, fairs); adjective (fair, fairer, fairest); adverb (fair — play fair)
meaning for a pupil
1) Fair means equal and right for everyone, following the rules. tree →
2) A fair is a big outdoor event with rides, games, animals and food. tree →
3) Fair hair or skin is light in colour. tree →
4) Fair weather is fine and dry. tree →
5) Fair can mean quite good but not great. tree →
6) Fair can also mean beautiful, used in old stories and poems. tree →
sense in the lessons
maths: a story setting with tickets and rides; or «fair share», meaning equal parts (divide equally); a fair test in science changes only one thing; a fair coin or dice gives each side the same chance; school: book fair, science fair; everyday life: play fair, take turns; phrases: «that's not fair», «fair and square»
examples
- Tickets to the fair cost $6. tree →
- He rode 4 rides at the fair. tree →
- Is it fair if Tom gets 5 and Ann gets 3? tree →
- They split the candy in a fair way. tree →
- We had a fair test for our plants. tree →
- She has fair hair and blue eyes. tree →
- Our class went to the book fair. tree →
- Play fair and take turns. tree →
- "Hail, fair maiden!" says the hunter. tree →
note
As an event: numbers are tickets and costs. As «fair share»: divide equally. Trap: none special. Homophone: «fare», the price of a bus or train ticket.
In the corpora
- Fair does not always mean the same for everyone; sometimes it means each person gets what they need.
- Sometimes fair means everyone gets the same, and sometimes it means people get what they need.
- The others in it may have said nothing in public, and a fair person remembers that.
- A family rota, where each person chooses the film in turn, makes movie night fair.
- Artists and writers asked whether it is fair that AI learned from their work without asking, and courts are still deciding.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «fair» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.